22nd Sep 2009
Cottage!
Spent last weekend at Diva Cottage in Wasaga-Vegas. The motley crew this year included 5 women and a rather large dog.
We started off Friday evening with a bit of wildlife education. Namely, two juvenile racoons wandered into our fire pit area while we were there. One of them was very interested in Melle’s feet and wouldn’t leave. So we used our survivor skills: banging pots & pans, yelling “F off, racoons!” and flashing camera flashes. All of which succeeded (finally) in getting them to climb a tree a whole 5 feet away from us.
Of course, a little later once the dog had arrived, and he was sleeping on his bed by the fire, another one tried to mosey in for a look. He went from dead sleep to treeing the scared shitless racoon in less than 2.5 seconds. And not even a bark, just a ridiculously low growl that I’m sure comes in handy when he’s hunting lions on the African steppes or something (he’s a Rhodesian Ridgeback – GORGEOUS!).
On Saturday, he marked the perimeter rather liberally, and we’re sure that contributed to the dearth of racoons that night.
Anyway, there was much drinking and eating, like every 2 hours eating. And then more drinking. And a party game that I totally sucked at because the names were all pop stars and my inner geek/nerd came out so I didn’t know who the hell they were talking about.
We did get some exercise – like, walking on the beach with mugs of coffee *cough* and not wine, as was surmised by the old guy that was yelling at us. And the dog did the most awesome run-by on a few people, which we found hilarious, though it was probably not so hilarious to the recipients to see a 120-lb dog barrelling at them full speed and turning away just inches from knocking them on their asses.
Also, cold. Very cold at night. But I was in charge of FIRE, so we had no fears. The girls seemed to think I was a little to enamoured of putting more wood on, but I think anything under 6 feet is still pretty humble as far as fires go, and I didn’t even use any accelerants.
Got home Sunday afternoon just in time for a nap. Oh, glorious nap.